Anna Karina was born Hanne Karin Blarke Bayer in Copenhagen on the 22nd of September 1940. Her father was a ship’s captain who left her mother while she was still only a baby. Her maternal grandparents initially raised her until the age of four, after which she spent time in and out of foster homes, before returning to live with her mother from the age of eight. She began acting as a child, appearing in a Danish short film at the age of 14 which won a prize at Cannes. She also studied dance and painting, worked as a model and sang in a cabaret.
She moved to Paris in 1958 at the age of 17 where she continued modelling, working for Pierre Cardin and Coco Chanel amongst others. Jean-Luc Godard was in the middle of casting his debut feature film A Bout de Souffle (Breathless, 1960) when he saw Karina in a series of Palmolive ads in a bath covered by soapsuds. He offered her a part in the film but she turned down the opportunity because of a nude scene. When Godard questioned her about her refusal, referring to the supposed nudity in the Palmolive ads, she is said to have replied “Are you mad? I was wearing a bathing suit in those ads – the soapsuds went up to my neck. It was in your mind that I was undressed.”
The character that Godard had wanted her to play didn’t ultimately appear in the film. However, she did accept a role in his next film Le Petit Soldat (The Little Soldier, 1960), which was controversially banned for several years for its political commentary on the war in Algeria. The two of them also began a relationship while working together on the film.
Godard and Karina were married on 3 March 1961, during the shooting of his next film Une Femme est un femme (A Woman is a Woman, 1961) in which she starred, and for which she received much acclaim, winning best actress at the Berlin Film Festival for her performance. Karina’s onscreen persona fit in well with the new kind of actors and actresses emerging from the New Wave, sensual, yet intelligent and vulnerable. It was this vulnerability, concealed beneath a carefree surface, which became the most distinctive trait of her youthful performances.
Her qualities as an actress were vividly showcased in Godard’s next film Vivre sa vie (My Life to Live, 1962), in which she played a single woman who abandons her marriage and child to pursue a career as an actress, and then, faced with financial troubles, turns to prostitution with tragic consequences. This was followed by the more light-hearted, but no less impressive, Bande a part (Band of Outlaws, 1964) with its classic dance sequence and stylish New Wave aesthetic.
Also in 1964, Karina made a film called Le Voleur de Tibidabo (The Thief of Tibidabo) during which she had an affair with her co-star Maurice Ronet. Soon after, in December that year, she and Godard were divorced. Despite this he cast her in his next film Pierrot le fou (1965). He later said he didn’t know how to make a film without her. Relations between them during the filming were strained but the resulting film, which in essence is an account of the breakdown of a love affair, turned out to be a creative triumph for both of them.
Director and star worked together twice more, on sci-fi noir thriller Alphaville (1965) in which Karina’s character joins forces with secret agent gumshoe Lemmy Caution to destroy the evil computer Alpha 60, and Made in U.S.A (1966) where she herself plays the hardboiled detective looking for a lost lover while battling an array of gangsters. In the same year, she gave a heartrending performance in Jacques Rivette’s La Religieuse (The Nun, 1966) as a rebellious nun persecuted by the Mother Superior of her convent.
Karina’s work with Godard and Rivette would later turn out to be the highpoints of a career, which rather tailed off from this time forward. She was increasingly in demand however, working outside France for the first time in Luchino Visconti’s Lo Straniero (The Stranger, 1967), Guy Green’s The Magus (1968), Tony Richardson’s Laughter in the Dark (1969) and George Cukor’s Justine (1969). On the whole, these international productions though were disappointing.
In 1968, she remarried to scriptwriter/actor Pierre Fabre. They were divorced in 1973. She was married twice more to actor/director Daniel Duval (1978-1981) and director Dennis Berry (1982-1994).
In the 1970s Karina’s more notable film appearances were in Christian de Chalonge’s L’Alliance (1970), Andre Delvaux’s Rendezvous a Bray (1971), The Salzburg Connection (1972), Franco Brusati’s Bread and Chocolate (1973) and Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Chinese Roulette (1976). In 1973 she wrote, directed and starred in her own film Vivre Ensemble that met with mixed reviews.
Outside of film Karina has acted on stage in Rivette’s adaptation of La Religieuse, Francoise Sagan’s Il Fait Beau Jour et Nuit, and most notably Ingmar Bergman’s Apres La Repetition. She has also maintained a singing career.In 1967, Serge Gainsbourg wrote his only film musical Anna for her, which featured the hits Sous le soleil exactement and Roller Girl. More recently she recorded an album Une histoire d’amour with Philippe Katerine, which was followed by a concert tour.
Since the 1970s she has appeared in a number of film and TV productions including Raoul Ruiz’s version of Treasure Island (1985), Jacques Rivette’s Haut, bas, fragile (Up, Down, Fragile, 1995), and a cameo playing herself in Jonathan Demme’s New Wave homage The Truth About Charlie (2002). In 2007 she wrote, directed and starred in Victoria, a musical road movie filmed in Montreal, Quebec and Saguenay-Lac-St-Jean. She has also continued recording and singing, releasing Chansons de films, a collection of songs sung in movies in 2005, and touring France, Japan and all over Europe. |
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